I’ve made an executive decision to rename these end of the week posts to simply “Gratitude.” I’m not consistently posting it on a Friday, a lingering nod to the posts published on Fridays elsewhere that originally inspired my practice of a weekly gratitude list.
1. The morning sky over my house. Not dissimilar to what we see on our walks, equally amazing.
2. Morning walks. Here’s something I wrote in my Wild Writing class yesterday about it:
Walking Ringo next to the river or around the ponds as the sun is coming up is church, and what I mean by church is a quiet stillness that makes me feel small and empty in the best possible way. My problems, my habits and worries, my neurosis suddenly not such a big deal. The sunrise, the water, my dog, and the quiet of the early morning, the encounters with the wild things of the world — all render the time and space sacred and our passing by, our noticing a prayer of sorts.
Culture tells us to build, consume, accumulate, but the truth is life exists in the moments and spaces where we are unencumbered by all that, the places where we are empty and luminous, the times where we don’t know and no longer care to know. We aren’t right or safe, we aren’t striving or hoping to win. We let all that go, we float where just a moment before we were falling, sinking. We look up and catch the color of the sunrise reflecting off the clouds and it stops us just where we are, asking for nothing.
3. Practicing together. In particular, my Friday morning writing class, group, sangha met for our last session until after the new year and it was some especially magic writing, and practicing art with Calyx and her loving support of my process is one of the very best things.
4. The season of light. We got our tree up and decorated; Eric made the coconut, walnut, dark chocolate bon bons my grandma and great aunt Maggie used to make every Christmas which I hadn’t had in years; all the presents have shipped and/or are getting wrapped; Christmas music is playing in the background; and Eric is officially on his winter break.
5. My tiny family, my tiny home, my tiny life. I am so so so so so lucky, so content here with them.
Bonus joy: a negative COVID test (I didn’t really think it was anything more than a cold but Eric knew I’d feel better if I knew for sure so he got me a rapid test I could take at home — pretty good that we are almost three years into this and that’s the first test I’ve taken), getting in the pool, sitting in the sauna, the hyromassage chair, naps, raspberries, clean sheets, clean laundry, watercolors, therapy, listening to podcasts, all the new holiday movies, flowers on my desk and in the bathroom, the gingersnaps Eric made, good playlists on Spotify, texting with Chloe’ and Mom and Chris, climbing documentaries (an odd interest for Eric and I to share considering neither one of us climb), cuddling with Ringo, reading in bed at night while Eric and Ringo sleep.
1. A Poet-Artist Looks to the Stars. “Monica Ong is a 21st-century visual poet who extends the reader’s sense of what is possible.”
2. Secret conspiracies and public systems from Seth Godin. “If we’d like the world to work better, more fairly and with more of a long-term view, we have to identify the systems that push participants to do the opposite. And then we need to consistently and persistently work to change the incentives that cause the entities in those systems to act the way they do.”
4. A Season for Looking Inward. “So what will ‘I’ feel during this season? Since I now realize the choice is mine, here are some examples of words I’m considering. Here are five words to focus on for a more meaningful, less stressful holiday season.”
5. ‘Embrace the Foolish’, an interview on Ask Polly. “Austin Kleon on blurring the lines between work and play.”
8. The Health Toll of Poor Sleep on The New York Times. “Finding that slumber sweet spot can be helpful for fending off a range of mental and bodily ills.”
11. Anne Rice, Who Spun Gothic Tales of Vampires, Dies at 80 on The New York Times. “She wrote more than 30 Gothic novels, including the best seller ‘Interview With the Vampire,’ which became a hit movie starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.”
13. Say More podcast episode 67: Mortality with Andrea Gibson on Spotify. “Olivia & Melissa go from complete chaos to total enlightenment in a conversation with renowned poet Andrea Gibson about mortality, the industry of death, the afterlife, and their new book You Better Be Lightening.” In related news, Nerdette Book Club: ‘You Better Be Lightning’. “We talk about what it has been like to lose the magic of live events during the pandemic and how they see their role as a poet and activist.”
20. Decolonizing Our Dreams. “We have to shed these oppressive structures that contain us so that we can dream of new realities where we can freely be who we already are — enough.”
22. Why Reparations Are About More Than Money. “Addressing histories of mass violence have to include both material reparations and public and visible symbolic gestures.”
24. On Being with Krista Tippett and Katherine May: How ‘Wintering’ Replenishes. “Krista first spoke with Katherine [author of Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, The Electricity of Every Living Thing] in midwinter 2020, and their conversation continues to offer a helpful container for our pandemic time: as one vast, extended, communal experience of wintering. As 2021 draws to a close — still with so much to metabolize and to carry, with an aching need for replenishment — Katherine May opens up exactly what so many have needed to hear, but haven’t known how to name.”
25. The 1619 Project and the Demands of Public History. “The ambitious Times endeavor, now in book form, reveals the difficulties that greet a journalistic project when it aspires to shift a founding narrative of the past.”
26. The Second Coming of Octavia E. Butler. “Sixteen years after the visionary novelist’s death, Hollywood is bringing a slew of her intense sci-fi novels to the screen.”
28. Her Instagram Handle Was ‘Metaverse.’ Last Month, It Vanished on The New York Times. “Five days after Facebook changed its name to Meta, an Australian artist found herself blocked, with seemingly no recourse, from an account documenting nearly a decade of her life and work.”
29. A good life is painful. “Psychologist Paul Bloom on the importance of suffering, the shortcomings of hedonism, and why he would never plug into the Matrix.”
30. ‘SNL’ took on TikTok with brutal accuracy. “The show satirized people TikTok-trying-way-too hard on the social media platform and it was was brutally accurate.”
31. ‘Sesame Street’ Was Always Political on The New York Times. “The beloved children’s show has been a recurrent culture-war target, but a documentary on HBO shows how social purpose was built into it.”
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 